24 November 2013 8:46 AM

Any reader of this column is usually several years ahead of the crowd. Here, we grasped from the start that the Blair creature was a menace; that the Iraq and Afghan wars were wrong; that joining the Euro would be a terrible mistake; that the Tories are both useless and doomed.

We already know that the return of grammar schools – once derided, now increasingly demanded – is the key to education reform.

But perhaps above all we understand that all important government statistics are fiddled, and that the crime figures are so violently massaged that they bear no relation to reality at all.

Yet fashionable opinion has until recently denied this truth, accusing doubters of ‘moral panic’. Lofty commentators and social scientists have proclaimed a new era of social peace and order.

When normal people, living in the real Britain, complain that this does not seem to be true where they live, they are sneered at as if they were deluded.

But last week, we learned the truth. At an astonishing hearing of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, experts and former police officers lined up to reveal the myriad methods by which the police make crime and disorder disappear from the figures.

At the heart of the trick is this simple aim – to pretend that large numbers of incidents which would once have been crimes, are now reclassified so that they don’t appear in the official returns as such. In short, crime has ‘fallen’ because we have now redefined millions of crimes as non-crimes.

You may still be attacked or robbed. But it doesn’t count. And this barely touches on another issue, which I plan to deal with shortly, of the vast amount of Internet crime which goes entirely unpunished and unrecorded.

The MPs were plainly astonished (for as usual they have not been paying attention). It was clear that the police are under heavy political pressure, from all major parties, to deliver lower crime figures.

This is one of two things our country is good at. Our most successful and fastest-growing branch of agriculture is cannabis farming. Our most successful industry is the manufacture of lying statistics, showing that everything is fine.

Meanwhile, half the containers leaving British ports are empty, because we make so little and the world does not want it. How long can this go on? Official figures will not be a good guide.

******

There’s only one problem with the plan for the Tories to re-name themselves the ‘National Liberal Party’. It’s that they’re not in fact ‘National’ in any way.

They slavishly do the bidding of the EU (while pretending to be against it). So they actively help to dismantle and dissolve our nation. And at the same time they are more or less dead in the North and in Scotland, where most people would rather Tandoori and eat their own grannies than vote Tory.

So why not just call themselves ‘Liberals’, and merge with the Liberal Democrats, whom they currently claim to hate and despise but who are, in fact, their friends and allies in the wrecking of this country?

And then the honoured name of ‘Conservative’ , might be freed from the Tory taint, and be adopted by a new party that actually does want to conserve our civilisation.

*******

The Disasters Emergency Committee is a fine and necessary body, because it has one simple job – to ensure our charitable donations go to those who need them, without middlemen or delay.

So it was dreadfully wrong for them to assert that climate change may have been to blame for the Philippines Typhoon.

This is not a fact, but a highly contentious opinion which many charitable people don’t share. It is a misuse of the DEC’s position. If they keep doing it, I fear they will make donors suspicious and less willing to give.

Charities have grown too close to government and are far too infested by political lobbyists, using the public goodwill to promote their causes. In the long term, this will undermine all charity. I hope the Charities Commission rebukes the DEC for this.

****

I never wanted to have any Human Rights. But surely the planned revival of Monty Python violates every single one of them?

*****

Here’s why so many cyclists are being crushed to death on our roads. Many car, van and lorry drivers actively hate them. This is partly because of Jeremy Clarkson, who spread the dangerous falsehood that cyclists don’t pay any tax towards roads, and made ‘jokes’ about running them down for fun.

But it is mainly because car owners, forced to crawl along our congested roads, are furious that their shiny toys don’t zoom about as they do in the TV commercials. And the sight of cyclists, moving with comparative freedom, fills them with frustrated rage.

Once, you might have said I was imagining this. But we have proof in the Tweet posted by Emma Way (fined this week for her offence) ‘Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way – he doesn’t even pay road tax.’

Her victim, as it happens, survived without serious injury, though that’s no credit to Ms Way. Many enraged motorists feel and drive the same way but have more sense than to say so openly. Jeremy Clarkson should use his BBC stardom to make a full retraction. If he does, he may spare many from injury or even death. If he doesn’t, well, you work it out.

Meanwhile, to the other drivers, who treat cyclists with courtesy and intelligence, my profound thanks. And to the stupid cyclists who ride through red lights, or seek an early death by wearing headphones while riding, stop giving the rest of us a bad name.

*************

How can we expect to stay free if we don’t pay more attention?

An allegedly coke-snorting Methodist Minister and bank chief is a good story. But this week has seen two frightening developments which have attracted far too little attention:

There are serious plans to bring political commissars, by the dozen, into Whitehall, destroying the civil service neutrality which has helped keep us free and relatively uncorrupt for more than a century.

And, perhaps even worse, the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to try two alleged terrorists in secret. The Prosecutors want to exclude press and public from the court, conceal the identities of the defendants and even ban reporting some of the charges. Why not make the accused wear Iron Masks while they’re about it? Let us hope this sinister plea is thrown out.

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30 September 2013 4:17 PM

It is very sad, but some people may actually be influenced by the argument that a UKIP vote at the 2015 election will put ‘Red Ed’ into Downing Street. Of course it will. That’s the whole point of doing it, a negative action misrepresented by expressing it as a positive one. You can’t keep Tweedledumber out without putting Tweedledumb in. There is no facility for electing no government at all (though given their performances lately, whyever not?). You do it because you really don’t much care who wins, and why should you? You want to punish someone.

I , for instance, am not one of those who say there’s absolutely no difference between the parties. I actually think that Labour wouldn’t have dared to smash up the armed forces the way the Tories have done. It’s a sort of Nixon and China point, not a moral plus for Labour. But it’s a fact. And I am astonished that the intervention of two ex-soldiers at the Tory conference on Sunday did not get more coverage than it did.

Did those present not see that they were witnessing a gigantic earthquake of Krakatoan proportions? A Tory Defence Secretary heckled by moustachioed and medal-hung ex-soldiers, for cutting the armed forces? And this in the days of supposedly total security, when all dissenting opinion is sniffed out and excluded, and none but the vetted get within a furlong of the conference hall? Lucky for the Tories that these decent old coves went quietly. If you want to know why the Tories are bound to lose, then there’s your answer. If they can alienate such people, they’ve alienated their deep core. Yet the sketch-writers seemed more interested in a tawdry stall of Thatcher knick-knacks.

I was reminded of the curious events at a Tory rally in Blackpool in October 1958, recalled at length in my book ‘The Cameron Delusion’ (first published as ‘The Broken Compass’). At this event, supporters of the League of Empire Loyalists were violently ejected from the hall for heckling Harold Macmillan. They were expressing or defending positions (on immigration and the winding up of the empire) similar to views that had quite recently been expressed by none other than Sir Winston Churchill, in the Cabinet Room of Ten Downing Street.

Which raises the amusing question of the Tory party’s incessant parading of Sir Winston as their exemplar and hero for the past 60 years or so, and conjures up the mental picture of the old boy being summarily ejected from a modern Tory Party conference by stone-faced stewards with plastic badges, to be handed over to ‘Security’ staff and then passed on to modern police officers with pepper sprays, Tasers and the usual paraphernalia of baseball caps, sub-machine guns, visible handcuffs and flexi-batons. Never in the field of human conflict, I’ll say.

Several distinguished journalists - no friends of the Empire Loyalists (no more am I) - were appalled at what happened to the Empire Loyalists on that long-ago Blackpool Day. They perhaps didn’t realise the real significance of it.

The Tories have always been ruthless in the pursuit of office, but the late Reginald Bosanquet, then a reporter for Independent Television News, testified later in court that the violence used against the Blackpool hecklers had been ‘excessive’. So did the late Bernard Levin, who said he had seen one of the hecklers marched into a room by uniformed stewards, whereupon ‘I heard cries and the door was repeatedly banged from the other side. When he came out he was very distressed’. Mr Levin also testified that the man was bleeding heavily from the nose, and his shirt was torn. This was, in a way, the Tories’ version of Labour’s far gentler ejection of Walter Wolfgang from their conference many years later. But it is largely forgotten because nobody much liked the Empire Loyalists, whereas old Walter was quite appealing.

This sort of thing really cannot happen now, thanks to TV, and I must admit, thanks to the Internet, which would spread images of it around the country so quickly that it would be politically impossible.

But I think it showed, even then, the truth – that the Tories had entirely accepted, by 1958, the Fabian reordering of Britain between 1945 and 1951, not to mention this country’s epochal defeat and humiliation by the USSR and the USA at Tehran, Yalta and Bretton Woods, and were prepared to enforce the change with all necessary ruthlessness.

Now they have entirely accepted the Blairite (ie EuroCommunist and Gramscian) reordering of the country between 1990 (the true beginning of Blairism) and 2010, and the German reordering of Europe since 1989 . And Michael Howard (the man laughably believed by some to be a ‘right-winger’, who created David Cameron and hugely centralised power in his party) and David Cameron himself were prepared to go to amazing lengths to reinforce this.

Their greatest enemies, in this project, are the loyal members and voters of their own party, who must be bullied, cajoled or otherwise persuaded into voting for and supporting governments which are hateful to them. The loathing is mutual, which is why I recently said on television that David Cameron did many of the things he does because he hates his own party. Of course he does. It's his job.

There’s only one answer to people who are wholly ruthless in the pursuit of office – and that’s to deny them office with equal ruthlessness. They will suffer far more from this than the voters will suffer from putting the ‘wrong’ party in office. Who (on either side of the political divide) thinks there has been any vast difference between the Coalition or the Blair-Brown, in their effects on daily life, living standards or human freedom? Or foreign policy? Or anything else?

Those who didn’t like the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock, and so abstained or voted for other parties in 1992, were not so thick that they didn’t grasp what their actions would bring about. Lo, John Major, perhaps the most unlikely victor in British electoral history, became Prime Minister. It wasn't that anyone much actually wanted him. It was that they didn't want the other one (much the same process put Ted Heath into Downing Street in 1970, after the famous 'unpopularity contest' between him and the by-then-discredited Harold Wilson).And the Labour Party was, for good or ill, forced to change, into something rather like John Major.

UKIP voters (and if you feel you must vote, which I don't, that’s the way to do it) can hardly believe that Nigel Farage is the national future. Even Mr Farage (and all credit to him for grasping it) knows that is not going to happen. But he also knows he can do a lot of mischief, and his latest plan, to offer individual Tories UKIP support, is very mischievous. It's absolutely not a pact(which would destroy UKIP) . But it could force a lot of blowhard 'Eurosceptic' Tories to show what they're really made of, or more likely what they aren't made of.

These UKIP supporters may genuinely hope to change the Tories, though the only way to change them is to destroy them utterly and replace them with almost anything else, perhaps a blob of plasticine. I mean, anything, anything would be better than this intellectually and morally bankrupt rump of deeply unattractive, ignorant and not-very-bright persons. Game of Thrones? More like a Game of Drones.

There’s a good chance that a Tory failure in 2015, especially if combined with Scotland voting to stay in the Union, will bring about the long-needed split and collapse of the Conservative Party. Scottish secession is in fact David Cameron’s only remaining hope of a Westminster majority. I am baffled and flummoxed by the number of commentators and politicians who claim, with straight faces, that the Tories can win an absolute majority in May 2015. On what polls are they basing this? It is virtually unknown for a governing party to increase its vote or share of the vote after five years in government – the March 1966 election, in which Labour got its absolute majority, followed a sort of probationary period of 18 months in which the voters decided (foolishly) that Harold Wilson was to be trusted after all. The 1983 Tory election triumph was brought about by the Falklands, and the 1987 one by the Alliance splitting the left utterly.

UKIP voters, many of whom feel as I do that the whole purpose of their vote should be to punish the Tories, need to go a step further. They should seek to destroy the Tories, so knocking down the great wall of flannel and conventional wisdom that keeps this country from discussing its own future, or influencing it. So what if ‘Red Ed’ gets in? Or a Lib-Lab coalition? Will you really be able to tell the difference? But five or ten years afterwards, we might have a proper British government again, which quite possibly may not happen, but will certainly never happen as long as the Tories survive.

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21 May 2013 7:58 PM

It is time for a
few words on Swivelgate, or Loongate, now that the initial frenzy (which made
judicious comment difficult) has ended. These thoughts are stimulated by Mr Slippery’s
very funny letter to the remaining members of the Conservative Party, in which
he claims to be one of them, to love them like anything, and to deplore any
rude remarks about them which might (or might not) have been made by any of his
friends and cronies.

The issue of this
letter was announced on the same day that he flung himself into the arms of the
Labour Party, so as to rescue his beloved Same Sex Marriage Bill.

Which of these two
actions is the more revealing? It doesn’t take more than half a second to work
this out. In fact, ever since Norman St
John Stevas and Roy Jenkins co-operated to pilot the Obscene Publication Act
through Parliament back in 1959, there has been a cross-party alliance devoted
to putting through socially and politically revolutionary measures that lack
public support. The OPA was the prototype not only for Jenkins’s Permissive
Society (achieved through supposed
‘Private Members’ Bills’ which just happened to get lots of time and informal
government backing) in the 1960s, but also for the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971,
the only Bill ever to have been tabled in identical form by both Labour and
Tory Parties, and of course the cross-party alliance that got us into the
Common Market and keeps us there however much everyone hates it, and however
obviously it reveals itself as an Empire of which we are a powerless province.

If you believed in
‘Conspiracy Theories’, which of course only swivel-eyed loons do, you might see
this as a conspiracy of the liberal elite in both parties against what used in
those days to be a conservative electorate, and is now a declining but still
potent remnant. The Labour decision to
back drug liberalisation split Harold Wilson’s Cabinet down the middle – the
division being between working class Real Labour types, usually Christians,
from Scotland, Wales and the Trades Union movement, and university graduates,
cultural and moral revolutionaries working through the Labour Party for
profound change. The Real Labour men, of course, had far more in common with
the ‘Swivel-Eyed loons’ than they had with (say) Richard Crossman or Roy Jenkins.
But the tribal divisions of British politics kept them far apart, never to meet
or co-operate.

The liberals, by
contrast, were quite happy to reach out across what they recognized was a
fictional party divide, and have been
doing so for more than half a century. The danger, that the social
conservatives might achieve a similar alliance, never before seemed very
pressing. Now it does. UKIP is already attracting Labor voters, from among
those disgusted with the bourgeois bohemian concerns of the Blairite Party. And
Labour is very worried about this.

I will stay away
from the actual incident in which a person is said to have uttered the words
‘Swivel-Eyed Loons’ in front of a group of political reporters. I have looked into it a bit, and all I can say
is that it really doesn’t seem that unlikely to me that a senior Tory might have
said such a thing, but that it is interesting that it should now be regarded as
news (in fact the time between the alleged remark and the reporting of it was
several days). As I pointed out (to the
usual derisive laughter) during ‘Question Time’ late last year, David Cameron
hates his party. How could he not? The only puzzle was why his Party did not
return the favour (I think it was an absurd and overblown conception of ‘loyalty’,
a duty which a political party does not really deserve especially when it is
actively betraying the country). But now
at last they seem to be doing so.

The occasion for
this is the trivial side issue of same-sex marriage, about which few people under
60 care at all, one on which the built-in liberal elite majority in the Commons
can easily ignore their views. I suspect this is Mr Cameron’s calculation. As I
have said here before, he knows he cannot win the next election, so it will be
handy for him and his allies to be able to blame the ‘backwoodsmen’ ‘Turnip
Talebans’ and the rest for this inevitable defeat. If only we had embraced the
modern world properly, they will say (and their many mouthpieces in the media
will echo this), then we might have won.
They can then accelerate their slow-motion putsch and drive the
remaining conservative elements out of the Tory Party. The most nauseating
feature of this next stage is that it may well involve the arrival in the
leader’s chair of Mr Al Johnson, now mayor of London, a man who Tory activists
quaintly believe to be more conservative than David Cameron. He isn’t, I warn you now.

The only danger to
the liberal elite will come when the issue in dispute is one which actually
does bring together a majority of the country (immigration, crime and disorder
occur to me). It will be no use the parliamentary ‘progressives’ uniting on
that, if the electorate are united the other way. But ‘When will that be?’ ask the Bells of
Stepney. And ‘I do not know’, says the Great Bell of Bow.

In the meantime, a
few random thoughts on my discussion with Linda Grant, the novelist and my
fellow York Graduate. We talked about the sexual revolution at the Bristol
Festival of Ideas. Judging from the mood of the occasion (and from a little
traffic on Twitter), the sexual revolution is pretty much accepted as a Good
Thing among Bristol festival goers.

The interesting
thing about the collapse and evaporation of the Protestant Christian Religion
By Law Established is how quickly its principles have disappeared from the list
of things which it is permissible to think. On several occasions I noticed the
temperature of the room noticeably dropping, once when I read a passage from
the Prayer Book marriage service (pointing out that an honourable equality of
man and wife as each other’s helpmeets and companions was not in any way a new
idea) and once when I said that the ready acceptance of mass abortion showed us
all what we would actually do when a defenceless minority among us was being
killed off by brute force, that is to say, we would do nothing, as we now do about such an event in our midst, though we do not like being reminded of what it actually involves.

There were one or
two others: it is interesting that the
sexual revolutionaries like to consider themselves pretty free-wheeling, but a
blunt description of the old bargain (that
a woman would not offer a man sex until he married her) seemed to shock quite a
few of those present. So did the idea that it might be an honourable estate to
be in charge of raising the next generation.

Although the
discussion was built around the 50th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s
‘Feminine Mystique’ and plainly about the position of women above all, someone
sought to bring up the subject of homosexuality, and I could sense frustration
when I said it really wasn’t very important and had no organic connection with the
main issue under discussion. Some in the
audience – or so it seemed to me - would have liked me to do or say something
they could have filed away under ‘homophobia’, thus allowing them to dismiss me
as an unworthy human being, and this
wasn’t it. What I completely forgot to say (and I had been reading the relevant
passage the night before, so had no excuse) was that Betty Friedan herself was
none-too-friendly towards homosexuality. Those interested should turn to pages
221-224 of the Penguin Modern Classics edition of ‘The ‘Feminine Mystique’, but
it is striking that the mother of the modern Women’s Movement should have
written of ‘the homosexuality that is spreading like a murky smog over the
American scene’ and ‘male homosexuals –and the male Don Juans, whose compulsion
to test their potency is often caused by unconscious homosexuality – are, no
less than the female sex-seekers, Peter Pans, for ever childlike, afraid of
age, grasping at youth in their continual search for reassurance in some sexual
magic’.

Before anyone
tries to place any ambitious construction on this, I quote the above simply to
point out that this is what Mrs Friedan said, and that these words were written in 1963, not
because I agree with the words quoted, or indeed with much else that Mrs Friedan
argues.

One other thing
arose out of my meeting with Linda Grant. Before the event we were chatting
about the new film of ‘The Great Gatsby’, which we hadn’t seen but had heard (and
read) was pretty terrible. I said I wondered if it was hard to film because it
wasn’t actually that marvellous a book. There was a horrified silence. Linda
has since tweeted that I am ‘wrong’ to think this. I have replied that the greatness
(or otherwise) of books is not something about which one can be right or wrong.
Truth is the Daughter of Time, and so is a book’s greatness. ‘Gatsby’ (I suspect because it is shorter than
Fitzgerald’s other major works) gets on quite a lot of school and college reading
lists. But is it that good? I got out my old 1960s Penguin Modern Classic and
had a go, but the word ‘pretentious’ kept leaping into my mind, though not as
much as it does when I struggle with ‘Tender is the Night’. I’ve written before
here of a couple of passages (one of which I wrongly remembered as being from a
short story) that I like, but they are untypical of the book as a whole.

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05 May 2013 12:01 AM

It is now
just a matter of time before the Tory Party dies. This is not a moment too
soon. For far too long this futile and fraudulent body has stolen the votes of
conservative patriots.

For far
too long Tory leaders have secretly despised their own supporters.

When
David Cameron described UKIP voters as ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’, he was
actually giving his true opinion of the men and women who have kept his own
party alive.

Since
then, he has shown by his every action that he loathes what is left of
conservative Britain, and that none of his promises is worth anything.

If there
is ever a monument to him, it should be made of cast-iron, brittle and prone to
rust away, like his broken pledges.

Now that
Tory voters have at last realised that he hates them, they are deserting him.

Some may
come back, in the vain belief that the Tories can win the next General Election
– or indeed, any General Election, ever again. But plenty more are gone for
good.

As I
wrote here three years ago: ‘I beg and plead with you not to fall for the
shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project. You will hate
yourself for it in time if you do.’

Of his
various promises, I wrote: ‘These “guarantees” fly from his lips whenever he needs
to please a crowd, but they are less valuable than Greek junk bonds.’

At that
time, shockingly biased and misleading media reporting had suggested falsely
that the Tories might win the 2010 Election. Anyone who read the actual poll
figures knew they hadn’t a hope.

And a
savage campaign of personal denigration had been directed against Gordon Brown,
as a substitute for anything resembling a conservative manifesto.

So there
was some excuse for continuing to vote Tory. Now there is none. Tory stalwarts
have not voted for UKIP because they love Nigel Farage – I think he is a
charming charlatan myself, and his party a rickety jalopy bolted together in a
garden shed. They have voted UKIP to punish the Tories for many years of
betrayal and deceit.

But it
goes much deeper than that. Tory voters were, until now, deeply loyal. They
thought it was part of their creed. They would flock to the colours at the
trumpet’s call, however little they liked it, because it was their duty.

But the
Tory leaders have been disloyal to their rank and file, and that old, deep
magic has finally failed. That is why the Tories are done for. Once loyalty is
gone, it is all too easy to see that the party machine is wretched, decrepit,
exhausted and broke; and to see that the party leadership is dishonest, cynical
and careerist.

I do not
know how many elections it will take, but the chance will soon be here to build
something much better. Let us hope we take it, for if we do not save ourselves,
nobody else will do it for us.

I wouldn't dare to hug lovely Diana

Where
does reasonable feminism stop, and where do mad man-hating wimmin’s rights
begin? The

Still-lovely
Diana Rigg says the frontier runs somewhere between putting your arm round a
woman (Dame Diana seems to think this is just about OK, though dangerous) and
patting her bottom, for which she recommends a slap.

I wouldn’t
dare attempt either without prior written permission. But I’ve never understood
why a sensible equality, in education, property, work and elsewhere, should
stop men giving up their seats or opening doors to women. To me it’s so deep it
feels like an instinct, and it hurts nobody.

Taxes need rescuing from their sad fate

I had
hoped that mine would be the only household in the country to be getting child
benefit, a free bus pass and winter fuel allowance all at the same time.

Alas, we
have had to give up the child benefit, so it will never come to pass. But I am
not at all ashamed of seeking to get every penny I can back from the State.

I regard
taxes as an absolute legal duty, but a cold one. I certainly don’t regard them
as a moral obligation. Most of the money I have given the State (for which they
have never once said ‘thank you’) is spent on things I don’t like.

There are
the bad schools, whose primary purpose is to force compulsory equality down our
throats, with education a very poor second. There are the increasingly
frightening hospitals, whose main job is to employ people.

There are
the motorways I hate, and the European Union I want to leave, and the police
who won’t do the job we pay them for. And there are the subsidies for fatherless
families which condemn so many children to blighted lives.

So if I
can rescue any of my money from these purposes, I am glad. For me, it isn’t a
free bus-ride, or a free prescription, or a winter fuel allowance. It is
unhappy, abused money, rescued from a sad fate and given a good home.

I knew
when I first heard of ‘restorative justice’ that it was a scam of some kind.
Since then, its semi-secret onward march has been rapid and decisive.

As we
discovered last week when it was revealed 34,000 offenders were dealt with
using ‘community resolutions’, it means that quite severe violence now goes
completely unpunished.

What
reformers need to understand is that before we had criminal law, we had
blood-feuds and chaos. A grudging insincere apology or a trivial payment are no
substitute for justice.

Who
really wants to privatise the Royal Mail? Who, after BT, the private water
companies and the private power companies, thinks it will be better as a
result?

It can
only be done because we, the taxpayers, have taken on the Post Office pension
fund. And how can the company be both private and Royal? Dogma once again
overrides common sense.

Given
that the police now seem to be mainly concerned with crimes (or alleged crimes)
committed 40 or more years ago, can we expect, around 2053, a great nationwide
mass arrest of elderly, white-haired muggers, burglars, shoplifters, vandals
and GBH merchants?

I do
wonder just how many of the planned ‘tough’ prison rule changes will actually
happen. I’ve been studying the summary, issued by the ‘Ministry of Justice’,
and parts of it seem a bit vague. I think we should monitor it carefully once
it comes into force, remembering that it was announced in an election
week.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down

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07 January 2013 1:58 PM

Mr Slippery has been annoying UKIP again, calling them ‘Odd People’. Well, I can’t complain, having called them ‘Dad’s Army’ for some time myself, and jeered at one of their MEPs for saying women should clean behind the fridge. But then, I’m not trying to get UKIP votes, whereas Mr Cameron, at least theoretically, does want those votes.

Talking about the 1990s, she asked him : ‘But those were thankless, wilderness years – surely he must have wondered if the whole enterprise was mad? "Um, I didn't think the concept was mad. I thought the people, in many cases," and he starts to laugh, "were not to my taste”.

"UKIP in the 1990s, the people in it and who voted for it were in the main 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells'. I mean, you look down the membership list in 1994, anyone below a half colonel was a nobody," he hoots. "I used to say you could always tell it was a UKIP meeting by the number of Bomber Command ties in the room. It was that generation." Was it his milieu? "No! I was the odd one out. Which I loved, of course. I've always liked to be the odd one out, wherever I am."’

I wonder, myself, whether those members have all gone.

Interestingly, Mr Farage does a bit of back-pedalling on drugs, but it is so unprincipled that it doesn’t in any way soften my criticisms of him and his party. Here’s the passage. Ms Aitkenhead writes: ‘But his party's enthusiastic libertarianism goes out of the window when it comes to a pleasure its core members aren't so keen on – illegal drugs. Farage's own instinct would be for wholesale decriminalisation – which would almost certainly broaden UKIP's appeal among younger urban voters – but the policy isn't even up for debate. "It would be completely impossible for me to win that debate within the party. And a general doesn't try to fight every battle."’

But back to Mr Slippery and his ‘odd people’. From the point of view of a very rich, privately-educated stockbroker’s son, who is married to a wealthy sprig of the nobility and who has never suffered from inarticulacy or a feeling of inferiority in his entire life, any political activist is going to seem odd. People such as Mr Cameron have believed all their lives that those who have strong views about things are in some way eccentric and a bit barmy. His Eton schooling and above all his immersion in the Oxford School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics will have told him that it is only the little people, the excluded and the disappointed, who dare to care about politics, and engage their passions in it. He has been taught that such feelings are beneath him, and that real commitment to any cause is mistaken and silly.

Party activists, from his Olympian position, can seem rather pathetic, odd and strange. Not for them the calm, opulent detachment of the elite. These are people for whom a new policy can spell bankruptcy, or penury , or wounded grief . Why, they feel their country’s woes as a personal pain.

In a world where normality means that the thrifty and hard-working end their lives in solitude and straitened circumstances, being ordered about by cruel care-workers, while the tricky, the violent and spendthrift are indulged by a complacent state, a bit of oddity is welcome.

To the disappointed inhabitants of New Britain , Mr Slippery and Michael Heseltine may seem unloveable, whereas more normal human beings, who have lived real lives of striving and disappointment such as Norman Tebbit, seem much more appealing (note how Lord Tebbit is still loathed and scorned by the liberal bigots).

By the way, I’ve noticed a growing tendency to suggest that in some way a vote for UKIP will aid a Labour victory at the next election. There is a very simple reason why people thinking of deserting the Tories for UKIP should not be influenced by it. *The Tories will not win anyway*. This was the case at the last election, where even the wild, inflated campaign of nonsensical rage against Gordon Brown (who was in fact joint Saviour of the Poond Sterling, along with Ed Balls) could not get the Tories a majority.

Now that people have seen what the Tories are really like ( and spotted that , as Mr Farage says, the Liberal Democrats are not the reason for their failure, but a useful alibi for what they planned to do anyway) , they are bound to do even worse than they did in 2010.

Labour will form the next government, probably as a minority, perhaps with Liberal Democrat or even SNP support, though there is a faint possibility that they will get a majority and a chance that they will form a coalition with a purged Liberal Democrat party led into the general election by Vince Cable.

The old and usually reliable rule, under which a party that can’t score 50% in polls in mid-term will not get a majority at the general election, seems to suggest that Labour will fall short of outright victory. But the Tories will do far, far worse. It simply won’t be possible to get people to loathe Ed Miliband the way they loathed Mr Brown. The idea of Mr Miliband as a hate figure is as unworkable as the phrase ‘feral guinea pig’ .

Last Sunday’s Mail on Sunday poll showed that, even without the UKIP surge, Labour would get a wafer-thin overall majority, if actual votes were based on current voting intentions. The idea that UKIP would therefore rob the Tories of a majority is not workable. The Tories have no majority of which they can be robbed, nor will they ever again achieve such a majority in the United Kingdom under anything approaching existing boundaries.

But is the idea that we can get from the current mess to a revived British politics in the course of one election is equally unworkable. It’s a ten or 15-year project, which, alas, has yet to begin. The real tragedy is that so many Tory tribalists insisted on voting for that awful, treacherous party in 2010, so postponing the necessary death of the Conservatives and their replacement. Let’s hope they are not similarly fooled again in 2015.

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09 April 2012 1:40 PM

I’m sure my Ironside ancestors, not given to gambling, wouldn’t approve, but Ladbrokes on Monday were offering 33 to 1 on my becoming an MP before or during the next general election. My own odds would be rather longer, but I suppose that it’s nice that they care.

Their press statement wasn’t entirely flattering : ‘Jessica Bridge of Ladbrokes said: "George Galloway has shown recently that anything can happen in politics. Hitchens shouldn't be ruled out as a serious contender.” ’

Anything can happen, eh? Well perhaps not. Anyway, grateful as I am for the encouragement I’ve received from many readers, I’ll now go into a bit more detail.

One, this is not an attempt to found a new party. As I have said a thousand times, real political parties arise when there is a vacancy for them. There is, just now, no such vacancy.

Anything founded when there is no vacancy bears the same relation to a real party as a Hornby trainset does to the old Great Western Railway. You may call it a party, and make appropriate noises as you play with it on the sitting-room floor. But it will not be a party.

What I would hope, at this stage, is that concerned individuals would begin to think about forming small exploratory committees in existing constituencies, under the ‘Justice and Liberty’ motto. They should aim to find out if there is support for a candidate broadly in favour of the simple principles I set out. They should then look for a suitable person, preferably genuinely local prepared to put himself or herself forward, with all the time and commitment that this involves, and prepared to serve in Parliament if actually elected.

The first aim of such committees must be to undermine the duopoly of the dead parties, and to send a repeated signal to Parliament and the media that voters in sizeable numbers are no longer prepared to vote or work for MPs who ignore their most basic concerns.

Only if such a party begins to score sizeable votes, and eventually wins seats, will the next stage begin – the stage in which the duopoly is genuinely challenged.

Several possibilities occur. Here’s an example: If such a committee manages to set itself up, it might then raise funds to organise an open primary election (those involved will need to become experts in electoral law quite quickly, as the duopoly will certainly try to use that law to obstruct them) which would be bound to attract a great deal of publicity and would, if well-organised, help to create a local presence for the candidate eventually chosen, and a legitimacy much greater than that held by the candidates of the duopoly.

I should have thought that anyone interested should aim for a long, slow take-off. The duopoly parties (and the Liberal Democrats as well) must be holed below the waterline before and during the next election (which will probably produce a Lib-Lab coalition, at this rate), so that they can be properly sunk in the next five years or so.

The main purpose in the early stages will be to attack them for their complacency and their rejection of common sense, as well as their obsession with elite preoccupations, and their scorn for the real difficulties of normal human beings. There will be time enough, once the duopoly have been badly damaged, to begin to formulate a detailed programme. For the moment, it will be simpler, and not dishonest, for a radical movement to define itself by what it is against.

Thanks to the ghastly Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there will be time to take advantage of the increasing problems of the Coalition (though it would be wise to be reasonably well-advanced by the time the Coalition stages its inevitable fake split, something it is likely to do around the end of next year).

As for me, personally, I shall not rush into the first by-election that comes up, but will consider carefully before putting myself forward. Genuinely local candidates with real connections and loyalties will often have a higher claim. I have no illusions about the limits of my appeal. But I think it possible that, despite that, there may now be enough voters who are detached from their old loyalties, and willing to listen to a thoughtful alternative.

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07 April 2012 7:16 PM

If George Galloway can get elected, should I too stand for Parliament? I have resisted the idea for years. I once worked at Westminster and saw the powerlessness of the individual MP against the thuggish pressure of the party whips.

I know that almost all elections in this country are rigged to suit the big parties. I am saddened by the way so many good people honestly imagine that they pick their own MPs at General Elections.

In fact, by clinging to habitual party loyalties, they just confirm the choices already made for them in secret by the party machines.

These machines are ruthlessly centralised nowadays, so that any independent or honest person is sifted out of the selection process. A few get through by accident, but you will have noticed that the experiment with open primaries has not been repeated. We can’t have actual voters playing any real part in picking candidates for safe seats. That would mean revolution.

Then there is the problem of party loyalty itself. I am endlessly baffled by the way in which the patriotic, honest, law-abiding people of this country vote for Labour and Tory candidates who loathe Britain and refuse to stand up for nation, law, liberty or justice. Yet they do. The millions of patriots who voted Tory at the last Election committed an act of self-harming idiocy. To support Mr Cameron’s openly declared Left-liberal project was as unreasonable as punching yourself repeatedly in the face, or burgling your own house.

Yet suddenly, in the past few weeks, I think we can hear the sound of mental chains snapping. The ridiculous and squalid performance of the Government on so many different subjects has – perhaps briefly – woken large numbers of people from their dreamlike doze of dangerous complacency.

They may have vaguely known that government was for sale. But the sight and sound of the unlovely Peter Cruddas openly selling the Prime Minister of this country (and his wife) to anyone with the money to pay suddenly brought home the truth in a way that thousands of words could not have done.

Mr Slippery’s attempt to get himself out of this was even more obviously the act of a fraud who has been found out and knows it. Caught in the searchlight, we saw a naked Public Relations Man, whose first and last resort is trickery and slickness, because that is what he prefers.

First we had a fake panic over petrol, then a fake pretence at being a man of the people by claiming to have stuffed his face with a fictitious Cornish pasty from a shop that had long ceased to exist. What a surprise, then, to find him last week claiming unconvincingly to have a lively Christian faith, while his Home Secretary gets on with snubbing and sidelining genuine Christians in the accursed name of ‘equality and diversity’ – Mr Slippery’s real religion, as we surely must now realise.

Those of us who have known this for ages, who have studied Mr Slippery’s bottomless cynicism, grotesquely greedy expenses claims and instinctive Leftism on all major issues, have until now been stuck hopelessly at the edge of things, surrounded by deluded optimists who think that Mr Slippery is only held back by Nick Clegg, and is preparing to emerge as his true self at some vague point in the future, round about the same place as the one where parallel lines meet.

Surely this is now unsustainable. As for the other parties, they are the same. I think that is one of the reasons for George Galloway’s victory in Bradford West. The old loyalties are at last dying, the Coalition actually speaks for nobody, there is no proper opposition in Parliament and – instinctively, like a flower seeking light – the electorate is recognising that this has to be put right. Mr Galloway is not, of course, the solution. We must do better than that.

John Maynard Keynes once said: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind.’ And he asked those who criticised him: ‘What do you do, sir?’ Well, I too have changed my mind.

And I think several hundred other people should do the same. In each parliamentary seat, concerned and wise men and women should now turn their minds to finding a candidate who has independence of mind, who is neither bigoted nor politically correct, who loves this country and is proud of its independence and its ancient liberties, who hates crime and injustice, who supports the married family and the rule of law, who understands that education without authority is impossible.

Where by-elections arise, they should be ready to fight them, and when the next General Election comes they should be ready to fight that too, to bypass and overthrow the sordid, discredited tyranny of spivs, placemen and careerists that is now ruining what ought to be one of the greatest civilisations on Earth.

I urge them to do so, under the simple motto of Justice and Liberty, a name that nobody can copyright and a pledge that nobody can fake. And if they do, then I’ll seriously consider putting my name forward.

Palin: Ignorant but profoundly decent

There is an extraordinary new film about Sarah Palin, Game Change, in which that fine actress Julianne Moore – herself a PC Leftist – gives an Oscar-worthy performance as the luckless Vice-Presidential candidate, who was even more ignorant about politics than our own Anthony Blair.

Unintentionally, the makers of the film reveal that Mrs Palin, for all her failings, is in fact a profoundly good person.

The scenes of her meeting Down’s children on her campaign and treating them as they should be treated – as fully human, valuable people rather than as embarrassments who should have been aborted – are inexpressibly moving. .......................................................

This weekend thousands of returning British travellers will face appalling passport queues. When will people realise that this is because the EU bans us from having what every truly independent country has – special queues for our own subjects?France can teach us nothing about 'human rights'

France can teach us nothing about 'human rights'

Beware of praising France’s fake-conservative President Sarkozy (never more fake, and never more conservative than during elections) for deporting Islamists in defiance of the Human Rights Charter.

France can do this because, for all its democratic trappings, it is utterly different from Britain. Like most of our continental neighbours, it has no real tradition of law being above power – the key to civilisation.

Britain by contrast, abides by the laws she makes and the treaties she signs, a principle going back to Magna Carta. That is why there is no compromise available.

If we are to regain our own laws and liberties, we must withdraw from the Human Rights Charter and leave the European Union too. Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights are a far better guarantee.

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29 October 2011 10:04 PM

Why are the 80 Euro-rebels still in the Useless Tory Party? They know that they were right, and David Cameron (pictured) was wrong. They also know that if they stay under his command he will carry on treating them like insects.

Some will be threatened. Some will find their seats have vanished thanks to Mr Cameron’s creepy reform plan. As long as they submit to him, they have no future. They will achieve nothing worth having for themselves, or for those who voted for them.

The things they believe in will still be scorned by the cold, ruthless liberal clique that runs the Tory Party.

Britain will stay trapped in the burning building that is the European Union, gaining nothing and losing independence, liberty and prosperity.

But look at what happens to the mere 57 Liberal Democrat MPs who voted for the EU on Monday. They are much loved by Mr Cameron and his circle. They need only to whisper a desire and it is granted – the latest being the ghastly plan to make us all live on Berlin Time.

Unlike the principled Tory rebels, these Liberal Democrat MPs stand for very little. They are mostly in Parliament because of what they are not, and what they don’t think or don’t say, rather than because of who they are or what they believe in.

If 57 soppy anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration, anti-family nonentities can push David Cameron around with the constant unspoken threat of walking out of the Coalition, think what 80 pro-British, anti-crime, anti-immigration, pro-education MPs could do to him by actually walking out of it.

He would then have to face a proper opposition – after all, David Davis disagrees with Mr Cameron much more than Ed Miliband does, and about far more subjects.

But to have any impact, the 80 must quit the Tory Party, which last week finally and irrevocably turned its back on its voters. As long as they stay inside it they are powerless serfs. Worse, they are a human shield protecting Mr Cameron from the emergence of a proper patriotic movement.

Following the example of the ‘Gang of Four’, who nearly 30 years ago came within an inch of destroying and replacing the Labour Party, they should declare independence.

From then on, if Mr Cameron wants their support, he will have to ask for it nicely, rather than by threatening, insulting and bullying them. And such a grouping would at last provide a real alternative to the three near-identical BBC-approved parties that nowadays compete for our votes.

My guess is that such a breakaway would do well at any by-election in an existing Tory seat, and by 2015 would be at least halfway to replacing the sordid and treacherous official Unconservative Party. Then we might have something to hope for.

What is there to lose? Its potential leaders know who they are, and how to act. Now is the time to do so.

You wouldn't find Jesus in a St Paul's tent

I back the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, (pictured) against the pestilent rabble that has cluttered up the precincts of St Paul’s Cathedral.

St Paul’s may be a bit commercial, but I don’t see how else it can pay for the upkeep of one of the ten greatest buildings in Europe, recently superbly restored. The Church of England gets no tax money.

And the Cathedral’s continued existence amid the soaring towers of mammon is an important reminder of the faith and beliefs that actually sustain our wealth and freedom.

As for the protesters, why are we all supposed to be so nice to them? They seem to think that by brainlessly saying they are against ‘capitalism’, they automatically become good.

‘What would Jesus do?’ they ask, with a whining implication that He would be one of them. Tripe. He despised politics, and rebuked Judas Iscariot (the first socialist) for going on and on about the poor to make himself look good. As you’ll recall, he wasn’t as good as he looked.

Christianity is not about having the right opinions and telling everyone. It is about who you really are, and what you really do, in secret, when nobody is looking.

Is smashing gravestones funny, Fiona?

The BBC forget far too often that they are paid for by you and me. That is why I was so angry last week when they refused to show me a recording of a recent TV news bulletin which had attracted many complaints.

Newsreader Fiona Bruce (pictured) was the focus of the viewers’ discontent.

They felt she had been far too light-hearted in her presentation of a rather dark item, in which a callous moron was shown driving a stolen JCB digger through a cemetery, smashing and scattering gravestones.

Some may be unmoved by this, or even think it amusing. But there is a large class of people who, for one reason or another, find the desecration of graves obscenely shocking and grim. I am one of them.

But at the end of the item, Ms Bruce spoke only to the London trendies, and forgot about everyone else. She exclaimed ‘Unbelievable!’ – as if it was all a bit of fun – while lifting her hands in the air and grinning with apparent amusement. Then, half-laughing, she handed over to the weatherman.

The BBC knew the matter was sensitive because of the complaints they had received. Yet a spokesman – while flatly refusing to allow me to see the BBC’s own recording of the programme – had the nerve to insist Ms Bruce’s response was ‘of pure astonishment at the extraordinary scenes that had resulted from the driver’s trail of destruction’. Ms Bruce herself, in my view rather more wisely, declined to comment at all.

For I have now seen a recording of the programme, despite the BBC’s efforts to keep it from me, and after watching it several times I think the complainers are right, and the BBC version is severely misleading.

This shows yet again that BBC people move in a world quite unlike the one where most people dwell. And that the Corporation, paid for by a tax levied under the threat of fines and prison, still arrogantly refuses to accept that it owes its paymasters any courtesy, or is obliged to be open when it has blundered.

The REAL tragedy behind the summer 'riots'

Much fuss last week when the Ministry of Injustice released figures about the backgrounds of those arrested after the mass thieving and destruction (the so-called riots) of last summer.

The liberal Left, which fools itself that crime is caused by non-existent ‘poverty’, seized on suggestions that many of the alleged offenders came from ‘deprived’ backgrounds (which in Left-speak appears to means ‘unable to afford the latest widescreen TV’).

Well, they can believe that if they want to. But I am sure that if anyone had checked, it would have turned out that more than 90 per cent of these people came from homes where there was no father reliably present. (NB: it’s the absence of the father I am emphasising, not the presence of a single mother.)

This is the single biggest predictor of bad outcomes in any child’s life, but it is also one our welfare system vigorously encourages. I expect that is why the Government didn’t try to find out the facts.

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19 January 2011 1:10 PM

'Cary' posts: 'I’m disappointed to have to disagree so strongly with his (PH's) analysis of the by election.’ I posted the result of the election under another article, but it needs to be re-stated (in brackets are the general election numbers, together with the change in number of votes between the two polls).

'Cary' continues: 'There is no evidence that any Tories switched to the Lib Dems; if that were so, where did all the erstwhile Lib Dem voters go? Certainly not to Labour who seem to have attracted a relatively small number of previous Lib Dems supporters. The simplest explanation is that sizeable numbers of Lib Dem and Tory supporters at the general election (especially the latter) did not vote this time. And thus Labour increased their majority from c100 to c3,500.

‘The result is good news for Mr Hitchens and those of us who consider ourselves proper Conservatives: faced with the party they support covertly urging them to vote Lib Dem, most (ie over 50%) of Tory voters stayed at home, some continued to vote Tory and a small number probably switched to UKIP. Hardly any bought David Cameron’s attempt to nudge Conservatives in the direction of the Lib Dems.'

Evidence of actual switching is hard to come by in a secret ballot. However, please note that the figures which 'Cary' cites are on a substantially reduced poll, so the size of the Labour vote actually represents quite a sharp increase.

Total votes cast for the parties listed in the General Election were 44,308, compared with 33,948 in the by-election.If Labour's vote had held steady as a proportion of the turnout, it would have been something like 11,000.If the Lib Dems had held steady on the same formula, they would have got about 10,500. If the Tories had held steady on their share of the vote, they would have got about 5,500. If anything, the Tory vote might have been expected to be higher than that, since their voters have a greater propensity to turn out at all times.

So we have to explain an increase in the Labour vote of almost 4,000, despite a drop in the total number of voters of 10,000. Where did these votes come from? Some of them will have resulted from the anti-Brown bounce, as voters driven away by Gordon Brown returned. But what of the rest? Direct switches from Tory to Labour are rare at all times, and I doubt if these formed any serious part of the Labour gain. Much more likely is that some of this was caused by Liberal Democrat defections, positively and demonstratively to Labour rather than to abstention, on quite a large scale. This is a credible result, and one everybody had predicted, especially after the tuition-fee volte-face.

That's the easy part. If anyone has any reason to doubt it, please produce evidence and arguments. The next bit is the interesting one, and the one which was not expected or predicted (though the MoS poll before the vote did show a surprisingly high proportion of Tory supporters willing to vote LD) and the one which fascinates me. The above explanation requires a switch of a large number of votes from Liberal Democrat to Labour. That would have left the Liberal Democrats with as few as 6,500, or (if a lot of Labour defectors returned from the wilderness of abstention) as many as 8,500.

But they didn't get 6,500 or 8,500. They received a far more creditable 11,160, a vote so healthy that it left Nick Clegg pretty much in the clear.

And the Tories, who ought, according to proportion, to have received at least 5,500 and probably rather more because of their ageing vote's high differential turnout, came out with only 4,481.

At least 1,000 Tory voters, and probably rather more, can I think be assumed to have switched to the LDs on this basis. Meanwhile, I daren't even begin to speculate on the size of the UKIP vote, which remains largely irrelevant and would surely have been much larger if there were any substantial conservative-minded discontent with the Coalition among Tory voters.

Some who abstained at the general election (and may have been potential Tory voters) may also have been encouraged to support the Liberal Democrats by the nods and winks of David Cameron. But I can see no reason why this result is good news for me.

***************************************

I am asked: 'Do you see any significance in the news on Conservative Home that David Davis and Jack Straw are joining forces to oppose the motion to allow prisoners the right to vote? Could both represent the conservative elements within each of their own parties?'

I wish it were so, as I have long hoped for such an alliance. But I wouldn't have thought Jack Straw would be its standard-bearer.

I sometimes use phrases such as 'skoolz n' ospitals' to make the point that those who claim to be concerned for these things speak without thought, and are not in fact worried about health or education, but about the money spent on these objects and the jobs so created.

Once again (groan) I'm urged to start a new party. Once again I beg the person involved to think for five seconds, and see that a) in a two-party system you cannot found a new party until there is a vacancy. There isn't such a vacancy. I tried to create one, and failed utterly.b) the British people vote tribally, not rationally (hence the problem above).c) I don't have the billions of pounds necessary to establish such a party against the competition of the state-funded or millionaire-funded or trade union-funded existing parties, which have the allegiance of the political reporters, and which possess guaranteed access to broadcasting worth hundreds of millions of pounds, simply because they are established.

I do hope this is the last time I have to squash this silly, thought-free suggestion, whose only result would be to destroy the hopes of anyone who followed it. I urged those who took this view to take a real practical step towards political change by refusing to support the Tories at the last election. They ignored my plea on various, and varyingly stupid, boneheaded, unresponsive and dim-witted grounds. The Tory party, which ought to have collapsed, survived and mated with the Liberals. Consequently we have the Social Democrat David Cameron as our Social Democratic Prime Minister, probably for at least another nine years, by which time I shall quite possibly be dead, and Britain will almost certainly be so. Give me strength.

I have since then abandoned any serious hope of making any impression on parliamentary politics. I carry on trying because I am forbidden by my religious faith to despair, and I have to accept that I might be wrong. But I see no evidence that I am wrong, and plenty that I'm right.

By the way, to the person who breezily and superciliously mocks my suggestion that attitudes towards opposition leaders are formed by trends of opinion within small and organised media cliques, I recommend a reading of 'The Cameron Delusion', in which this process is described and explained in detail. He doesn't have a clue how this country works. That's why he is so dismissive.

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03 September 2009 9:56 AM

In answer to the question from 'Desperate' (in block capitals) ‘WHEN WILL PETER HITCHINS PUT HIMSELF UP FOR ELECTION?’ one pertinent answer would be: ’When enough people can spell his name.’ I have no illusions that I am set to sweep the country. On the contrary. But this mistake is only a symptom of the wider problem. Those who say they support my criticisms of the government, presumably on the grounds that they accept that I have thought hard about these matters, researched them, and come to conclusions based on principles like their own, then flatly refuse to listen to the most important, and simplest piece of advice I shall ever offer, which is 'Don't vote Tory' (and, since you mention it, don't vote BNP ever either) and especially, 'Don't vote Tory at the coming general election.' This is the best chance in our lifetimes of changing the political direction of the country. A Tory victory would throw it away (while a Tory defeat would deprive us of nothing important. Name me one substantial difference a Tory government under David Cameron would achieve. Just one. Look at the Boris Johnson Mayoralty in London. Is London no longer a politically correct, multi-culti, over-taxed, badly police, badly schooled city? Is it?)

In this country, the only elections that matter are those for Members of Parliament. No major offices, no major powers are available to anyone who is not an MP. Election to Parliament, as Mr 'Desperate' should have noticed by now, is not decided by the people, who approach elections as sheep approach sheep-dip, corralled and obedient. It is controlled by the major parties, whose candidates for Parliamentary seats always win them. In 'safe' seats (of which there are many) the dominant party can guarantee election. In the contested ones, one of the two (occasionally three) does so. Voters do not normally vote for candidates who have not been nominated by these three parties. Peter Hitchins (or Hitchens) would never be nominated by any of these three parties, because he and they have wholly different political objectives. Even if, in a fluke election, Peter Hitchins (or Hitchens) were elected as an MP, he would have no influence whatever in a Parliament still dominated by the existing parties. Hence the need for the creation of a party to replace the Tories which cannot be founded until (please listen carefully to this bit) the Tories split and collapse. Which they will not do if they win the next election. Individual MPs have no influence at all, unless they work in concert with an organised party. Which is why Peter Hitchins (or Hitchens) campaigns for the destruction of the Tory Party, and why he is weary beyond belief with the unwillingness of people such as Mr (or perhaps Mrs) 'Desperate' (who claim to agree with him) to listen with any care to what he actually says.

By the way, I now know there's nothing I can do here to persuade supporters of the BNP that I am their dedicated opponent, that I despise their party and its traditions and that they are fantasising when they imagine this will ever change. I tell them again and again that I wish to have nothing to do with them. These people are beyond reason and facts.

But is it possible for those who drone: 'If New Labour run the country for another five years it will ruin Britain' to pause for a second and realise that - if the Tories have the same policies as Gordon Brown, as they do - they too will destroy the country in five years. In which case why vote for them?

Actually, I think the country is more resilient than that. It can be rescued, but only when it has a party in government that wants to rescue it. A Tory election victory would almost certainly postpone the creation of such a party to some point beyond my death, and that of many others posting here. It will take decades before either of the major parties is ever again as vulnerable as the Tories are now, and before the voters will ever again have so much power as they will have next June. You can't sack the government. It will be the same whatever you do. But you can sack the opposition.